A new incident on the Lebanese border

From Naharnet:

The Israeli army said it shelled a Hizbullah position in southern Lebanon on Friday after an explosion targeted an Israeli patrol on the border, as the Qaida-inspired Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant reportedly claimed responsibility for the bomb attack.

Agence France Presse quoted a Lebanese security source as saying that Israel shelled southern Lebanon after an explosion on the Lebanese-Israeli border.

The Israeli army confirmed that report, saying that it had acted after a border patrol was attacked with explosives.

The Lebanese source said "10 Israeli rockets hit an uninhabited border area" and that "there were no casualties."

"In response to the explosive device activated against IDF (Israeli army) soldiers, the IDF fired towards a Hizbullah terror infrastructure in southern Lebanon. A hit was confirmed," the Israeli army said in statement.

Earlier, the Israeli army radio said "artillery fired at southern Lebanon in retaliation for the explosion of a concealed device targeting a patrol."

"The device exploded near soldiers on the border in the Har Dov area," the statement added, using Israel's term for the occupied Shebaa Farms.

Meanwhile, Lebanon's state-run National News Agency said “a 107 mm rocket struck an Israeli army post on the al-Ramta Hill inside the occupied Shebaa Farms.” It did not elaborate and it was not immediately clear if it was referring to the same attack on Israeli forces.

Media reports later said that the Qaida-inspired ISIL claimed responsibility for the bomb attack on the Israeli patrol.

The ISIL claim would seem to be nonsense, but there have been rockets to Israel in the past that were claimed by Sunni terror groups. I would think that Hezbollah is the more likely culprit.

But this incident, together with the similar on on the Syrian border last week and the Islamic Jihad rocket escalation, indicates that Iran is directing its satellite terror groups to keep Israel on edge. It is not clear why; perhaps to divert attention from what is happening in Syria (there have reportedly been heavy Hezbollah losses recently). If Israel attacks Hezbollah, then Iran might be gambling that public opinion would swing towards Hezbollah and against the Sunnis fighting in Syria.

Haaretz' Amos Harel thinks that this is a deliberate response to Israel's last airstrike on the Lebanon/Syria border.

Friday's incident in Har Dov points to a gradual change in the rules of the game on the northern front, after years of almost complete calm. Slowly, Hezbollah and the Assad regime are taking the gloves off in their struggle against Israel. The attacks they both attribute to the IDF are answered with terror attacks from the other side, even if for the time being the targets are limited and the operations are low-profile, and no public claims of responsibility are voiced in their aftermath.

Last December, shortly after the mysterious assassination of Hezbollah commander Hassan al-Laqis in Beirut, an IDF jeep was targeted by an IED in an area controlled by the Syrian Army around Mt. Hermon. In early March, immediately after a Hezbollah convoy was attacked in Lebanon, rockets from Syria were fired toward the Israeli side of the Hermon. Last week the IDF thwarted an attempt to plant an IED on the Syrian border, hitting Hezbollah operatives or militants loyal to Assad. The incident on Friday is the latest in this series of events.

It is possible that this is a face-saving gesture, but it seems a stretch that even Arab pride would think that these tiny attacks are any sort of retaliation.

Anyway, things are heating up in Lebanon, slowly, and Hezbollah knows quite well that it can be a wild card in whatever happens.